Herald
by NekomimiToree
Summary: When a series of incidents puts Alyssa's perspective in jeopardy, she finds how dangerous it is to lose the thing most people can't live without. Her memories. And time is not on her side as she races to save the things most important to her. But at what cost?


**A/N:** Well excuse me for not posting/reviewing anything in forever. But since I don't have fans per se, I can take as long as I want. Haha. It's a perk.

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Prologue-The Last Day

"Would you throw that thing away already?" I hiss after he pours the iodine across the fleshless scar. He blinks twice and then decides to dismiss my question and refocus himself on my leg. The scab has formed overnight but puss is pouring out at the dried gash stretching from my ankle to my knee. He flips and stretches his robe over the wound to cleanly wipe off the excess liquid off my leg. I don't know how careful he is trying to be, but I hiss again and feel faint from the pain. Or blood loss.

Either way, the next time I feel pain is when I open my eyes and realize I've been resting the back of my head against a slab of crooked rock. I slowly come to and I try to reassess my surroundings.

My leg is bandaged. Time had passed. As I try to step, the pain and fatigue in my leg tackles me forward and I land face down onto the dusty floor. "Alyssa!" someone yells. A pair of hands helps me up. My fringing hair clouds my vision and when I part the strands, I spot light coming over the window. Slowly, I limp over and look out. Sunset is in less than ten minutes.

"Why didn't you run?" I yell, reaching for the closest scrap metal and throwing it at him. "I told you that we have to be on the move no matter what!" The metal bar clangs harmlessly at his side, and I'm about to fall when he catches me with strong arms. "Let go of me!" I want to wrestle him out, to get him to go on without me, to leave me, but if I do I'll trip again and look incredibly stupid.

"Let's go right now. We still have sometime before sunset." He carries me out of the building at a sorry limping pace. A strong, almost chilling gust of dusk air unhinges the tuff of hair tucked behind my ears. My vision is obscured but I don't need my eyes to tell how much trouble we are in.

"If those things find you, they will kill you," I say in my hoarse voice. I try to catch a sip from my water bottle but after feeling its weight, I decide to save the rest for the trip northward, to the place with perpetual sunlight. That is if we can make it past tonight and find a boat.

We leave the cracked and disoriented building we were in to an even worse landscape. Wooden phone poles that once stood at the corner of every street, and the formerly busy motels stand isolated in the cold desolated wind. Winter is arriving—unsettling nights and shorter days. I barely slept since arriving back in town, but that's normal nowadays.

Ever since the day the world ended, it's perpetual loop of survival.

We…we barely survived. Every day we need to be ready by sunset, or they will catch us, no exceptions.

What are they? I do not fully understand myself. What I do know is that they latch and never let go, like a leech. They drain the energy from the body, and feast zealously as a victim struggle. I've seen the feast before. Their cursed touch ages the flesh and bone. They feed in swarms and they don't stop until an empty husk remains. Die empty. Die old. And in the most meaningless way possible.

Chell and I have been running ever since I caused and dragged him into this mess. We both know it is my fault. But abandoning me is the last thing he has in mind. "Sorry." I tell him, moving my arms across his back and clinging onto his side. I survey the empty land, and I whisper my next words to the world around me. "For everything."

"Don't mention it," Chell starts, averting his eyes. "Losing Shiro has been hard on you. But there's always something to look forward to as long as we live. We must support each other all the way, right?"

The nostalgic look he gazes at me gives me the silent but dreadful recognition that I am the reason he looks forward to living. And I swallow very hard because I know there's only disappointment down that path.

"Don't die for me," I warn as I step across the rough remains of a bar and a set of bones. The sun finally sets, putting the city in deep darkness. There used to be street lights and the stars and the moon. But now it's covered in dark. You don't know where you are going, or if you will head anywhere. You just stand there for a while with your flashlight and try to find the path. And we find it beyond the rubble.

I shiver but not because of the chilled air. I hear the terrifying pounding in the dark.

"Run!" he screams. Phht. What a laugh. With me holding him down, there's no way he can run. But he somehow does, with me on his back. He thinks he can outrun the monstrosity. Its legs keep on pounding, pounding nonstop like drums. It will catch up. We will die.

"Don't overexert yourself!" I weakly whisper. There's no response from him, and I try to whisper again but the words don't come out of my mouth either out of fear or guilt. We survived the end on a whim, but eventually I know either one or both of us will die on a whim. I feel practically numb when Chell dashes into an empty, broken, desolated hallway and puts me down on the dusty earth where souls die.

"Stay here. I'll fight it away."

I don't hear the panic in his voice. An overwhelming, miserable pain compounds my chest. "You fool! They will find me anyways! And they will kill you if you don't run now!"

"Not if I can help it. You just have to keep on believing that one day we don't have to be afraid of the dark anymore. Just stay low for a little longer. It'll get better." He lightly kisses my bandages with his fingers and leaves behind the meager supply of food and water we have left. I grab a hold of him, and want to tell him to leave without me. But there's no stopping him, and I can't help but let go, let him try to save the both of us. I barely realize it but slowly the dark has engulfed him, and I can't feel his presence anymore.

I choke back the tears that threaten to melt me away and I force myself into a standing position. When the monstrosity pounds into the view, five meters away, I instantly freeze. Chell died. Those are the words imprinted on my being. Chell died. Chell died. I try to pick myself up. To fight this. To reject this. I've seen and done so many things that I want to take back. I want to take them back. I don't want to die. Not like this, in a meaningless way. Not here either.

A single teardrop makes pass my eyelids and I silently accept my tired fate.

At the moment when the monstrosity takes its step, it vanishes in a screen of black smoke. Behind the soot and dust is a figure in a black, shrouded robe. His face is unseen in the hidden darkness but my instincts feel the taste for death. I wonder why I'd feel this way, and instantly I realize I don't feel a presence from the figure at all. Slowly, I come to the conclusion that he's an illusion, a figment of my wishful imagination. Yet, when he walks forward I press myself against the wall.

We are nearly face to face when he utters a single weak word, _alyssa_, before holding up something sharp and thin and stabs it through my heart. In a single painless instant, the world disappears.

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A/N: How's the prologue? Exciting right? I'm looking for a beta-reader to glance over the subsequent chapters to Herald. I've already looked through them myself but mistakes are always elusive and you never quite know how an audience would interpret the story. If you are up to it, feel free to leave a comment or PM me. Don't be shy!


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